Axial and azimuthal heat load distribution in a 7-injector gox-gch4 combustion chamber

The propellant combination methane and oxygen has seen a steady increase in interest during the last years although details about an appropriate injector design for optimum performance with acceptable wall heat loads and stable combustion are not available in open literature yet and therefore an effort is made to investigate the sensitivity of a specific injector design to variations in operating conditions. This paper summarizes recent work on the experimental determination of heat load distributions in a GOX/GCH4 multi-injector model combustion chamber in the pressure range of 10 – 50 bar. Two major effects have been studied, first, the dependency of the axial and azimuthal temperature and heat load distribution on variations of pressure and propellant mixture ratio and, second, the importance of flame anchoring on each individual injector element for heat load distribution and combustion dynamics.